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Fine I thought when I read that today’s theme was ‘bakeries’, I’ll go take a shot at Jackson’s bakery. There’s usually something interesting going on around there. So I go and find that they’ve put up a large building blocking out all the going’s on, that’s the yellow thing on the right. Hmmph!

Jackson’s are a successful Hull institution, they been going since 1851 and at one time nearly every main street had a Jackson’s shop on it. The shops were sold off to Sainsbury’s (boo hiss) and the company now concentrates on food manufacture. About a million loaves a week are made here but until recently none of them were sold in Hull; most of the produce goes to sandwich makers and food service companies in the UK and Europe. There’s often a smell of baking bread filling the air round here.

The Cyclists’ Touring Club [ 1 ] started in the 1878 to promote the interests of cyclists. Establishments such as hotels, cafés and repair shops that met their standards were awarded a large plaque.

Wikipedia informs me: “CTC is organised at a district level, with CTC Local Groups organising cycle rides on most Sundays and often during the week. The more leisurely rides are planned around café stops, the quality of the ride often being judged on the standard of the cakes; CTC has been referred to as “Café To Café” or “Coffee, Tea and Cakes”.

These new buildings are on the site of the Needler’s sweet factory. The factory was demolished a few years ago but while it was making mainly boiled sugary sweets called, I believe, Glacé fruits, the smells around there were tremendous. Mixtures of strawberry and coconut scents would fill the area hiding the stench from the nearby tannery. Though they knocked down the sweet factory the tannery is still making the area “smell of delicious boiling bovine carcasses” …. [ 1 ]

If your name is Walker, Tucker or Fuller then it’s a good bet your ancestors were involved in the cloth making trade. The fulling of cloths involved them being scoured by soaking them in stale urine and walking up and down on them, this bleached the cloth which was then thickened by felting to give increased waterproofing. I have read that urine was so important to this trade that it was taxed; an early example of the government taking the piss.

Above is a sign on a jewellers which is being tarted up, we’re on tenterhooks. Below an uninspired picture of Walkergate, it’s the only one I’ve got so it will have to do. At the end of the 1970s a road, New Walkergate, was built to by-pass all these old streets which were then pedestrianised.

In 1890, so the story goes, two Hawaiian princes and their English guardian went surfing in the east Yorkshire resort of Bridlington, in the cold North Sea. So starting a craze in this country for taking boards out to sea in order to be washed ashore … hmmm. Anyhow the UK tourist people seem to think that folk would rather go to Bridlington than Bondi for their surf, they’re nuts, of course!